Download or read book Rob Bell and a New American Christianity written by James K. Wellman and published by Abingdon Press. This book was released on 2012 with total page 169 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Is Rob Bell the most important leader in the new American religious landscape?
Download or read book Rob Bell and a New American Christianity written by James K. Wellman JR. and published by Abingdon Press. This book was released on 2012-11-01 with total page 169 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Christian message needs a new interpreter: one that is particular enough to know and interpret the tradition but broad enough to evoke thought and feeling from broader groups of people, including evangelicals, liberals, and those who are disenchanted with churched religion and who describe themselves as spiritual but not religious, yet are fond of the Jesus tradition. This book helps readers to understand the new landscape and its key figure, Rob Bell, by bringing a reasoned voice to the conversation and shedding light on the story, directions, and emotional power of the figure who Andy Crouch claims will be the main influence on Christians in this generation. While his theology is seen as a theo-political stage by church leaders, when Rob Bell tours and speaks, it is the unchurched, the people in the pew, the people who want to be in the pew, who are listening—by the thousands. His recent placement on the cover of Time magazine sealed his import on the American landscape for anyone interested in religion. Jonathan Nathan, a bookbuyer for the Harvard COOP, the largest booksellers in New England with a significant religion section says that no book has ever sold like Rob Bell’s to an audience that is young, thoughtful, and college-educated. Bell’s church has 10k members, and his influence has affected every sector of the American protestant church. Why? Because Rob Bell has caused the whole evangelical world to rethink the scope of SALVATION with one single question: who gets to be saved? With that short sentence Bell has initiated a whole new movement in rethinking what it means to be an evangelical. A movement that has only begun. Not only are heaven and hell at stake, but salvation itself. Is it meant for all or for only a small elect group—and if so, who gets to decide the parameters of that small group? If heaven and hell are not ultimate identifiers for a life of faith, can the passion to evangelize be maintained? If salvation is not either/or, but both/and, does the whole idea of world evangelism simply disappear? Rob Bell has created another question for Evangelicals: Will you decide to live in a closed world of your own making or an open world? Those most influenced by Rob Bell are younger Evangelicals who are dying to open up their worlds. Rob Bell just gave them permission. According to Andy Crouch, his is the voice that will most influence this current generation. For Liberals, Rob Bell gives them reason to be passionate about their faith and to think in big terms about it without giving up their minds and their questions. For the conservatives, he’s the voice that young Christians are looking to and admiring, and even if they disagree, they are trying to observe and imitate his approach and appeal. Rob Bell doesn’t have the personality to sink into some religious subculture: He is a new super religious brand, the Apple or Pixar of his generation. Evangelicals will buy it because they want to damn him, imitate him, or do both. Liberal religionists will buy it because they know that he is a Schleiermachian figure, making a case for faith to its cultured despisers with passion and a new aesthetic. Spiritual but not religious folks will buy it because Rob Bell has an invitation and appeal that is rare, and appeals well beyond holy huddles. As an authorized biography, that will allow for extensive interviews with Bell and his some of his congregants. This will include interviews with outside informed supporters and those that reject him and his theology. The book will reveal what makes him “tick,” how his Wheaton College background affected his work, and how he is dealing with accusations of being on the border of evangelical heresy. This book will be researched and written over the next two month, with a finish date of December 1. Half or more will be available by the fall AAR/SBL annual meeting, with the plan to have Rob Bell and the author presenting. The book will show how is he challenging orthodoxy and why theologians are upset. It will outline the key players in the debate. It will also argue that no matter what the theologians say, people are still attending Bell’s church, listening to him speak. This is in large part because the man has a pastor’s heart. He cares about his people. The theologians aren’t reclaiming the conversation; they are making themselves irrelevant as the people who want genuine faith and are coming to Rob Bell’s books and talks because, as Bell said, “when the woman coming to church tells me she has stopped cutting herself and that a life of faith makes a difference”--that’s where the real things are happening. Finally, people like him, he is a charismatic speaker that young people are listening to: He has something to say, and he is pastorally living the heart of what he is saying.
Download or read book Jesus Wants to Save Christians written by Rob Bell and published by Zondervan. This book was released on 2009-03-17 with total page 204 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: There is a church not too far from us that recently added a $25 million addition to their building. Our local newspaper ran a front-page story not too long ago about a study revealing that one in five people in our city lives in poverty. This is a book about those two numbers. Jesus Wants to save Christians is a book about faith and fear, wealth and war, poverty, power, safety, terror, Bibles, bombs, and homeland insecurity. It's about empty empires and the truth that everybody's a priest. It's about oppression, occupation, and what happens when Christians support, animate and participate in the very things Jesus came to set people free from. It's about what it means to be a part of the church of Jesus in a world where some people fly planes into buildings while others pick up groceries in Hummers.
Download or read book Velvet Elvis written by Rob Bell and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2006-06-29 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In order to find an authentic understanding of the Christian faith, Bell frees readers to consider God beyond the picture someone else painted.
Download or read book Love Wins written by Rob Bell and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2011-03-15 with total page 162 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Millions of Christians have struggled with how to reconcile God's love and God's judgment: Has God created billions of people over thousands of years only to select a few to go to heaven and everyone else to suffer forever in hell? Is this acceptable to God? How is this "good news"? Troubling questions—so troubling that many have lost their faith because of them. Others only whisper the questions to themselves, fearing or being taught that they might lose their faith and their church if they ask them out loud. But what if these questions trouble us for good reason? What if the story of heaven and hell we have been taught is not, in fact, what the Bible teaches? What if what Jesus meant by heaven, hell, and salvation are very different from how we have come to understand them? What if it is God who wants us to face these questions? Author, pastor, and innovative teacher Rob Bell presents a deeply biblical vision for rediscovering a richer, grander, truer, and more spiritually satisfying way of understanding heaven, hell, God, Jesus, salvation, and repentance. The result is the discovery that the "good news" is much, much better than we ever imagined. Love wins.
Download or read book What Is the Bible written by Rob Bell and published by HarperOne. This book was released on 2019-02-05 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Instant New York Times Bestseller Rob Bell, the beloved author of Love Wins and What We Talk About When We Talk About God, goes deep into the Bible to show how it is more revelatory, revolutionary, and relevant than we ever imagined—and offers a cogent argument for why we need to look at it in a fresh, new way. In Love Wins, Rob Bell confronted the troubling questions that many people of faith were afraid to ask about heaven, hell, fate, and faith. Using the same inspired, inquisitive approach, he now turns to our most sacred book, the Bible. What Is the Bible? provides insights and answers that make clear why the Bible is so revered and what makes it truly inspiring and essential to our lives. Rob takes us deep into actual passages to reveal the humanity behind the Scriptures. You cannot get to the holy without going through the human, Rob tells us. When considering a passage, we shouldn’t ask "Why did God say . . .?" To get to the heart of the Bible’s meaning, we should be asking: "What’s the story that’s unfolding here and why did people find it important to tell it? What was it that moved them to record these words? What was happening in the world at that time? What does this passage/story/poem/verse/book tell us about how people understood who they were and who God was at that time?" In asking these questions, Rob goes beyond the one-dimensional question of "is it true?" to reveal the Bible’s authentic transformative power. Rob addresses the concerns of all those who see the Bible as God’s Word but are troubled by the ethical dilemmas, errors, and inconsistencies in Scripture. With What Is the Bible?, he recaptures the Good Book’s magic and reaffirms its power and inspiration to shape and inspire our lives today.
Download or read book What We Talk About When We Talk About God written by Rob Bell and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2014-09-02 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How God is described today strikes many as mean, primitive, backward, illogical, tribal, and at odds with the frontiers of science. At the same time, many intuitively feel a sense of reverence and awe in the world. Can we find a new way to talk about God? Pastor and New York Times bestselling author Rob Bell does here for God what he did for heaven and hell in Love Wins: he shows how traditional ideas have grown stale and dysfunctional and reveals a new path for how to return vitality and vibrancy to how we understand God. Bell reveals how we got stuck, why culture resists certain ways of talking about God, and how we can reconnect with the God who is with us, for us, and ahead of us, pulling us forward into a better future—and ready to help us live life to the fullest.
Download or read book Everything Is Spiritual written by Rob Bell and published by St. Martin's Essentials. This book was released on 2020-09-15 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "An exciting vision of the future" --Michael Eric Dyson Everything Is Spiritual is an unexpected and compelling invitation to see your life in a whole new way. We have the great moments of our lives, the highs, those times when we soar, when it all makes sense, when it feels like it all has purpose and meaning. And then there are all those other moments—the lows and aches and failures and struggles and experiences that leave us wondering what the point of it all is. Are our lives ultimately bits and pieces and fragments—you try to find a little peace and hope and then it’s over? Or is there more going on here? In our increasingly polarized and disoriented world, Everything Is Spiritual gives us a radical new take on how it all fits together, how it works, how it’s all connected. Part memoir, part extended riff on the quantum nature of reality, part history of the universe, Rob Bell takes us back through the twists and turns and struggles of his story in order to help us see the larger story so that we can reconnect with our story.
Download or read book Hell Rob Bell and What Happens When People Die written by Bobby Conway and published by Multnomah. This book was released on 2011-06-24 with total page 90 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Love Wins, the controversial bestselling book by Rob Bell, attempted to answer this question, which troubles nonbelievers and believers alike. Because Bell challenged traditional, orthodox Christian views of hell and the afterlife, many were left asking: “Are his ideas as reliable and hopeful as they sound? What does the Bible really say about hell?” In Hell, Rob Bell, and What Happens When People Die, Bobby Conway, a recognized authority on Christian apologetics, brings clarity to these serious life and death issues. “Love really does win,” according to Conway, “but it’s through the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.” Based on a thorough examination of Scripture and a careful analysis of Rob Bell’s propositions, Conway delivers a compelling and concise explanation of hell, the afterlife, and a loving God. The conclusion: Everyone who believes and trusts in Christ has no need to fear the anguish of hell but can confidently anticipate the eternal joy of heaven.
Download or read book Do I Stay Christian written by Brian D. McLaren and published by St. Martin's Essentials. This book was released on 2022-05-24 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Dubbed "a heroic gate-crasher" by New York Times bestselling author Glennon Doyle, Brian D. McLaren explores reasons to leave or stay within the church and if so how... "Brian's new book on remaining Christian knocks it out of the ballpark in terms of framing and naming the questions. I cannot stop reading it. Thank you, Brian!" —Fr. Richard Rohr, OFM, founder of the Center for Action and Contemplation, author of The Universal Christ "Any thoughtful Christian has been asking the questions McLaren tackles here, but many of us are afraid to voice them aloud. In Do I Stay Christian? we’re gifted a gentle guide who opens ideas and voices the questions we cannot, naming our frustration, fear, and hesitant hope." —Rev. Dr. Amy Butler, former Senior Minister, The Riverside Church; Founder, Invested Faith Do I Stay Christian? addresses in public the powerful question that surprising numbers of people—including pastors, priests, and other religious leaders—are asking in private. Picking up where Faith After Doubt leaves off, Do I Stay Christian? is not McLaren's attempt to persuade Christians to dig in their heels or run for the exit. Instead, he combines his own experience with that of thousands of people who have confided in him over the years to help readers make a responsible, honest, ethical decision about their religious identity. There is a way to say both yes and no to the question of staying Christian, McLaren says, by shifting the focus from whether we stay Christian to how we stay human. If Do I Stay Christian? is the question you're asking—or if it's a question that someone you love is asking—this is the book you've been waiting for.
Download or read book Drops Like Stars written by Rob Bell and published by Zondervan. This book was released on 2009 with total page 162 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is an exploration of the complex relationship between suffering andcreativity, driven by the belief that there is art in the agony.
Download or read book Velvet Elvis written by Rob Bell and published by Zondervan. This book was released on 2009-03-17 with total page 165 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Velvet Elvis, Rob Bell frees us to consider God beyond the picture someone else painted for us in order to find an authentic understanding of the Christian faith. God doesn't have boundaries, and faith doesn't have to be limited to what someone else has told us. God is alive. Faith is alive. Velvet Elvis helps us find our faith. And even if it doesn't, it encourages us to keep looking. Faith doesn't end with this book. But it just might begin...
Download or read book Onward written by Russell Moore and published by B&H Publishing Group. This book was released on 2015-08 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Christianity Today "Beautiful Orthodoxy" Book of the Year in 2016. Keep Christianity Strange. As the culture changes all around us, it is no longer possible to pretend that we are a Moral Majority. That may be bad news for America, but it can be good news for the church. What's needed now, in shifting times, is neither a doubling-down on the status quo nor a pullback into isolation. Instead, we need a church that speaks to social and political issues with a bigger vision in mind: that of the gospel of Jesus Christ. As Christianity seems increasingly strange, and even subversive, to our culture, we have the opportunity to reclaim the freakishness of the gospel, which is what gives it its power in the first place. We seek the kingdom of God, before everything else. We connect that kingdom agenda to the culture around us, both by speaking it to the world and by showing it in our churches. As we do so, we remember our mission to oppose demons, not to demonize opponents. As we advocate for human dignity, for religious liberty, for family stability, let's do so as those with a prophetic word that turns everything upside down. The signs of the times tell us we are in for days our parents and grandparents never knew. But that's no call for panic or surrender or outrage. Jesus is alive. Let's act like it. Let's follow him, onward to the future.
Download or read book Sex God written by Rob Bell and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2010-01-02 with total page 179 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sex. God. You know the two subjects are connected; you just don't have the words for how they are connected. And they cannot be separated. Where the one is, you will always find the other. When you actually live and feel and engage, you discover that the physical things around us are like windows into more. And when you talk about sexuality, you quickly end up in the spiritual---because 'this' is always about 'that.' Something deeper. Something behind it all. You can't talk about sexuality without talking about how we were made. About how we relate to each other. About how we were made to relate to each other. And that will inevitably lead you to who made us. At some point you have to talk about God. To make sense of the one, we have to explore the other. That is what this book is about.
Download or read book A Call to Resurgence written by Mark A. Driscoll and published by Tyndale House Publishers, Inc.. This book was released on 2013 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It’s tempting to believe that the Christian faith is alive and well in our country today. Our politicians talk about God. Our mega-churches are filled. Christian schools dot our landscape. Brace yourself. It’s an illusion. Believe it or not, only 8 percent of Americans profess and practice true evangelical Christian faith. There are more left-handed people than evangelical Christians in America. In this book, Mark Driscoll delivers a wake-up call for every believer: We are living in a post-Christian culture—a culture fundamentally at odds with faith in Jesus. This is good and bad news. The good news is that God is still working, redeeming people from this spiritual wasteland and inspiring a resurgence of faithful believers. The bad news is that many believers just don’t get it. They continue to gather exclusively into insular tribes, lobbing e-bombs at each other in cyberspace. Mark’s book is a clarion call for Christians. It’s time to get to work. We can only do this if we unite around Jesus and the essentials found in his Word, while at the same time, appreciating the distinctives within each Christian tribe. Mark shows us how to do just that. This isn’t the time to wait or debate. Join the resurgence.
Download or read book What We Talk About When We Talk About Love written by Raymond Carver and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2015-05-25 with total page 176 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In his second collection, including the iconic and much-referenced title story featured in the Academy Award-winning film Birdman, Carver establishes his reputation as one of the most celebrated short-story writers in American literature—a haunting meditation on love, loss, and companionship, and finding one’s way through the dark.
Download or read book Religion and Human Security written by James K. Wellman, Jr. and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2012-08-16 with total page 346 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since the1950s the world has witnessed a period of extraordinary religious revival in which religious political parties and non-governmental organizations have gained power around the globe. At the same time, the international community has come to focus on the challenge of promoting global human security. This groundbreaking book explores how these trends are interacting. In theoretical essays and case studies from Turkey, Egypt, Pakistan, the Americas, Africa and Europe, the contributors address such crucial questions as: Under what circumstances do religiously motivated actors advance or harm human welfare? Do certain state policies tend to promote security-enhancing behavior among religious groups? The book concludes by providing important suggestions to policymakers about how to factor the influence of religion into their evaluation of a population's human security and into programs designed to improve human security around the globe.
